The best Jacques Boudet’s drama movies

In Paris, Lulu, a passionate policeman, works with the faith of a rookie, despite the sclerotic bureaucracy and the incompetence or negligence of some of his colleagues. In his new position as a narcotics inspector, he tries to keep his sanity as he witnesses the worst of the human condition.

Bahia Benmahmoud, a free-spirited young woman, has a particular way of seeing political engagement, as she doesn't hesitate to sleep with those who don't agree with her to convert them to her cause - which is a lot of people, as all right-leaning people are concerned. Generally, it works pretty well. Until the day she meets Arthur Martin, a discreet forty-something who doesn't like taking risks. She imagines that with a name like that, he's got to be slightly fascist. But names are deceitful and appearances deceiving.

Transport Minister Bertrand Saint-Jean is awoken in the middle of the night by his head of staff. A bus has gone off the road into a gully. He has no choice but to go to the scene of the accident. Thus begins the odyssey of a politician in a world that is increasingly more complex and hostile.

What happens when a man and a woman share a common passion? They fall in love. And this is what happens to Jean-René, the boss of a small chocolate factory, and Angélique, a gifted chocolate maker he has just hired. What occurs when a highly emotional man meets a highly emotional woman? They fall in love, and this is what occurs to Jean-René and Angélique who share the same handicap. But being pathologically timid does not make things easy for them. So whether they will manage to get together, join their solitudes and live happily ever after is a guessing matter.

By a little bay near Marseille lies a picturesque villa owned by an old man. His three children have gathered by his side for his last days. It’s time for them to weigh up what they have inherited of their father’s ideals and the community spirit he created in this magical place. The arrival, at a nearby cove, of a group of boat people will throw these moments of reflection into turmoil.

Servais Mont, a freelance photographer who works taking compromising photos, gets fascinated by Nadine Chevalier, a tormented low-budget movie actress married to an eccentric film photo collector.

Camille, a naive schoolgirl meets an intriguing influence in Joelle, a slightly older and much more experienced spirit. Camille follows her new friend through the discovery of sex and the darker side of life. As the film progresses, Camille discovers AIDS and the fear that she may have picked up the disease in her early encounters.

After many years of rambling across Europe the aging Giacomo Casanova is impoverished. He wants to return to the Republic of Venice but he doesn't dare going there directly because he was a fugitive when he left. While he tries to find a way to get a pardon he meets a young lady named Marcelina. The more he shows his affection, the more ostentatiously she rejects him. Even so he doesn't give up on her because her lover Lorenzo has grave gaming debts. In return for the required money Lorenzo tells Casanova about a looming secret rendezvous with Marcelina. Moreover he lets Casanova take his place. Undercover of the night Casanova finally seduces her. Lorenzo later feels his honor was besmirched and demands satisfaction. Casanova kills him in a duel and then goes home to Venice.

The film is set in Marais, a quiet region along the banks of Loire river in 1918. Riton is afflicted with a bad-tempered wife and three unruly children. Garris lives alone with his recollections of World War I trenches. Their daily life consists of seasonal work and visits from their two pals: Tane, the local train conductor and Amédée, a dreamer and voracious reader of classics.

World Chess Champion Akiva Liebskind (Michel Piccoli) faces his former pupil Pavius Fromm (Alexandre Arbatt), who defected to the West from the Soviet Union five years earlier, for the World Chess Championship in Geneva, Switzerland. The tension and strategies between the players draw parallels to the political conflicts and ideologies between East and West during the Cold War.

The beginning of the 20th century. Charles Swann, a young and wealthy dandy, spends most of his time hanging out with the old nobility, notably the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes. He is madly in love with a pretty demi-mondaine, Odette de Crécy. Idle, Swann surrendered complacently to the torments of jealousy. After hours of suffering, he manages to spend a night with Odette. In the morning, he believes that ultimately, this one is "not his type". However, we find him, many years later, alongside Odette who, now his wife, gave him a daughter. In the company of Baron de Charlus, brother of the Duchess of Guermantes, he wonders about the failure of his sentimental life, so far removed from this absolute he dreamed of...

Jeannette is a single mother living in a working-class community in Marseilles; she tries to support herself and her two kids on her salary as a check-out girl at a supermarket and lives in an apartment complex where everyone is thrown into close proximity with everyone else. Marius is working as a security guard at a cement factory that has gone out of business; he's also squatting in the building, since the plant is soon to be demolished and he'll be needing his money later on. One day, Jeannette happens by the factory, and spotting several cans of paint, tries to take two of them home with her. Marius spots her and tries to chase her away, while she rails at him with curses against the capitalist system. The next day, an apologetic Marius appears at her doorstep, cans of paint in hand; the two soon become friendly, and a romance begins to bloom, though it quickly becomes obvious that Jeannette's romance novel fantasies are a bit off the mark from what Marius has in mind.

Ariane is having her birthday party but no one comes. She decides to leave at the seaside and take part with her life that disappointed her.